Cars 2 tops original with $66.1M opening; Bad Teacher a strong second with $31.6M [UPDATED]

Disney/Pixar’s Cars 2 overcame negative reviews — becoming Pixar’s first Rotten movie (currently 34%) — to climb to an impressive and original-besting $66.136M from 4,115 theaters this weekend. Not adjusting for inflation, that’s a little more than $6M ahead of what the original “Cars” opened to 2006 ($60.12M). The original would go on to gross $244.083M domestically ($461.983M worldwide).

The breakdown for the weekend was $25.718M on Friday, -9% on Saturday to $23.374M and -27% on Sunday to $17.044M.

Even though Cars 2 played in more theaters than the original did in its opening weekend (4,115 vs. 3,985), the sequel still managed to best it in Per Theater Average ($16,072 vs. $15,086).

Debuting in second place for the weekend, and knocking Green Lantern to third (more on that shortly), was the Cameron Diaz-starrer Bad Teacher. The R-rated comedy grossed a stronger than expected $31.603M from 3,049 theaters and added a strong est. $18.3M from foreign markets for an est. $49.903M worldwide opening weekend.

That was more than enough to push Green Lantern down to third place. After an already disappointing debut last weekend, Green Lantern fell a further 66% in its second weekend with a $18.028M. A 10-day domestic cume of $88.989M is not at all what Warner Brothers wanted to see from the $200M-budgeted superhero film. Box Office attendees are not likely to be kind to the film next weekend when “Transformers: Dark of the Moon” invades theaters beginning on Tuesday. Worldwide cume for Green Lantern is at an est. $118.389M.

Rounding out the top five was Super 8 in fourth with $12.028M ($95.114M cume / est. $131.114M worldwide) and Mr. Popper’s Penguins in fifth with $10.146M ($39.293M / est. $43.893M worldwide).